Each year, the Legislature gives school districts the same amount as the previous year (known as "hold harmless"). Then lawmakers add whatever adjustments strike them as necessary. Those additions are often based on political clout rather than systematic, documented need.

Grove’s proposal has the advantage of keeping taxing decisions at the local level, where individual districts best know their own needs.

But the clear downside of his plan is that potentially result in 500 different tax structures – one for each of the state’s 500 school districts. Business leaders have already complained about the potential havoc that could be wreaked by such a system.

The debate over how Pennsylvanians pay for a key and constitutionally mandated government service is a worthy one and it must take place.

But any solution must take into account both tax shifting and the more serious structural problems underlying public education.

Otherwise, policymakers will continue to have the same old conversation, yielding the same predictable results.